Rich, White, Mormon . . .

In a recent piece, I suggested that Romney would likely win the Republican nomination, and since he has no history of scandals and is obviously intelligent, the Obama campaign (which cannot run on Obama’s record in office, which is risible) would attack him in the only way it can. It will try to attack him for being rich, white, and Mormon. That is, it will try to arouse envy of the rich among the poor, hatred of whites among blacks and Latinos, and anti-Mormon prejudice among the populace at large (and especially among evangelicals).

So I am not surprised that Obama is now running this sort of campaign. I am, however, surprised — and pleasantly so — at how quickly the Romney campaign and the countermedia are hitting back.

I have already described in some detail the mainstream media’s concerted attack on Romney’s faith. Two recent illustrations have just occurred. MSNBC host Martin Bashir read on air from the Book of Mormon, somehow linking it to his condemnation of Romney to hell for allegedly lying about Obama’s stellar record of job creation (a record that, by the way, should condemn Obama to hell). And Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer couldn’t resist reminding us all that Romney descends from a polygamist great-grandfather.

The countermedia hit back, pointing out that Obama’s grandfather and even his father were polygamists. So the Schweitzer attack quickly fizzled.

Then there were the attacks on Romney’s wealth. Obama felt obliged to remind us that he was “not born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” and his campaign advisor and pet harpy Hilary Rosen opined that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life.

The pushback was rapid. If not a silver spoon, Obama clearly had some feet in his mouth. The blogs had a field day pointing out that his white grandmother was wealthy; she paid for him to go to the toniest prep school in Hawaii, then sent him to Occidental, a high-priced private college. The sharp-tongued Ann Coulter caused a stir when she observed that Obama was a clear beneficiary of affirmative action, which is certainly a case of being privileged.

As to Rosen’s slur, the backlash was quick and strong enough to make Obama disavow Rosen’s views and make her apologize rather quickly. Ann Romney had, as the countermedia reminded us, raised five boys, which every parent will attest must have involved endless work. The countermedia also showed that Mitt and Ann Romney started out with essentially nothing, and built their fortune together.

Of course, Rosen was just pushing a line, one found in a strain of feminism that goes back to Simone de Beauvoir. It’s the idea that women who choose to be stay-at-home mothers are being turncoats to The Cause. This may play well with Women’s Studies profs, but it clearly doesn’t resonate with most women.

Finally, it became all too clear how Obama aims to fire up his base among minority voters: look for any racial incident to exploit. One appeared, providentially, in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Knowing the game plan, the mainstream media quickly hyped the story: big, armed white man shoots innocent black child, and gets away with it in the Deep South. Obama quickly pushed racial grievance exploiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson aside (not an easy thing to do!) to get in front of the issue. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the prez solemnly intoned.

Obama’s plan was as obnoxious as it was obvious: find and dramatize a racial incident, get minority supporters to rally behind him, then turn to the rest of the country and say, “See? You need me to keep racial tensions under control! My opponent can’t do that, because he’s white!”

However, the countermedia rapidly discovered facts that shook the Narrative. Trayvon’s shooter, George Zimmerman, was half-Hispanic; he was smaller than Martin; Martin had had trouble with the authorities; Zimmerman had wounds on the back of his head, consistent with his story of self-defense; and so on.

The president and his henchmen in the MSM will continue to assail Romney along these obvious tracks. But the countermedia seem to be pushing back, and Romney seems to be catching on to the vicious assault headed his way. He has had only a tiny appetizer — the main course awaits him.

In the meantime: entitlement programs keep heading towards collapse, war clouds appear once again in the Middle East; we remain totally dependent on volatile oil supplies (Obama having canceled the Keystone pipeline and prevented oil and gas exploitation on public lands), and the pathetically tepid “recovery” seems headed for a stall.

A country gets the government it deserves. And it gets the economy it deserves as well.

About this Author

Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of Liberty. His most recent book, Devious Thoughts, is available through Amazon. All of his academic articles are freely available through www.Academia.edu.

The Coming Anti-Mormon Rage

In a recent article, I reflected upon the shape that the presidential campaign against Romney will take. I suggested that the Obama administration cannot easily defend its record, and so will focus on attacking the Republican candidate — who, after Super Tuesday, is likely to be Romney. But the problem for the Obama regime is that Romney has no obvious flaws: messy divorces, past affairs, tax dodging, DUIs, misdemeanors, or what have you. So the Regime will be reduced to hammering away at the fact that Romney is rich, white, and Mormon.

The attack is already well underway.

The administration’s war-machine has three phalanxes. First is the direct reelection team, funded by perhaps a billion dollars. The second is the Obama “independent” super-PACs, funded by all those wealthy people to whom Obama gave billions in taxpayer subsidies for their "job-creating" businesses. These super-PACs, which are already being staffed by Regime members, will probably net another billion bucks to reelect their guy. Labor unions alone have pledged $400 million for the upcoming race; 96% of all union contributions go to Democrats.

But let’s not forget the third phalanx — the mainstream media. The soi-disant “journalists” of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CNN, and so on are outright whores for this administration.

No, I retract that: I don’t want to insult hookers. At least they get paid in honest money for their services. By contrast, the pseudo-journalists with the MSM cheerfully service this administration pro bono, or for some motives less creditable than money.

The Obama regime will be reduced to hammering away at the fact that Romney is rich, white, and Mormon.

You can expect the attack on Romney’s wealth (“He’s rich, so he cannot relate to you common folk!”) will be the one openly directed by the administration’s reelection committee. The race card will be played by the Regime’s allies . . . indeed, Obama just set up an “African-Americans for Obama” group to advance that attack. The open attack on Mormonism, however, will not be carried on directly by the Obama campaign, but by super-PACs and especially by the media.

The anti-Mormon card is being dealt even now, in a sudden rush of news “stories” about Romney’s faith.

Let’s start with leftist comic Stephen Colbert, who stepped up to the anti-Mormon plate with his spoof on the Mormon practice of baptisms for the dead, a religious custom that has irked some people (some prominent Jews in particular). Colbert mockingly “converted” all dead Mormons to Judaism. Isn’t that hilarious? But is it purely coincidental that Colbert has only now found this obscure Mormon practice worthy of national notice? Perhaps he will next make fun of the Catholic practice of having masses for the dead. Oh, but wait — JFK, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and many other liberal icons have been — Catholic!

John Turner is concerned to appear more balanced. In a recent piece, he doesn’t say Romney had to answer for Mormon baptismal practices, although he discusses them in lavish detail. But he does say Romney should address the Mormon ban on admitting men of African descent to the priesthood, a ban that Turner notes didn’t end until Romney was 30 (in 1978). Of course, Turner never tells us what Romney could have done about the ban. But Turner got his chance to play the race card, because this issue reminds African-Americans that Romney is white.

At least hookers get paid in honest money for their services. The pseudo-journalists with the mainstream media cheerfully service this administration pro bono.

Also miming some degree of neutrality is one Randall Balmer, who recently wrote an article that obliquely warns us of the Mormon menace. Balmer is an Episcopal priest, and one usually expects Episcopal priests to have better manners. Still, prejudice drips from every line of his article. He construes the fact that only Mormons in good standing are allowed in Mormon temples as a sign of "the Mormon penchant for secrecy" and insinuates that Romney, by refusing to belabor the public with his religious beliefs, is being secretive about their nature. In fact, Mormon beliefs and practices are as well known as those of mainline Christian denominations. If you don't know about them, you're just not interested, that's all.

Balmer says that Romney’s “quest for the White House” will be “buffeted by questions about his religion.” Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy! I haven’t heard many ordinary people who care about it one way or the other, outside of the mainstream media, truth be told. Romney will be buffeted on his faith only by the likes of Balmer, to whom the “essential question” is the very “nature of Mormonism,” an “upstart” religion from — New York state! But wait — isn’t Episcopalianism a variety of Protestantism — from England? From the Roman Catholic point of view, Balmer's denomination is an “upstart” religion. And from the perspective of Judaism, isn’t Christianity itself an “upstart” religion? These are questions clearly beyond Balmer’s capacity to address.

Balmer — the very model of tolerance — moves on to note that Mormons refer to non-Mormons as “Gentiles.” But then, Jews refer to non-Jews as “Gentiles” — which seems to be OK with Balmer. Yet, Balmer intones gravely, “many Americans doubt" that Mormons are Christians, because they accept the Book of Mormon as scripture. What this means, of course, is that most Americans don't believe in the Book of Mormon. This passes for news — in the context of a presidential campaign.

Of course, Balmer reminds us that the Mormons “only” ended polygamy in 1890. But let me expand on this a bit. The Mormons allowed polygamy until 1890. Some Muslims, I believe, practice it to this day. But hasn’t America, at least since the Great Society craze of the 1960s, openly and completely embraced polygamy in practice? I mean, don’t our welfare laws allow — nay, encourage — a young man to impregnate as many young women as he can, secure in the knowledge that the taxpayer will pay for the children? Isn’t the first of the month, when welfare checks arrive, derisively called “Father’s Day” in the inner city? And don’t sperm banks allow many women to impregnate themselves from the same “donor”? I guess what I’m asking is — why all the brouhaha about Mormons allowing polygamy more than a century ago?

It doesn’t seem to occur to Bruni that the reason Romney’s faith is not a big deal in this primary fight is precisely because it is old news.

Balmer notes archly that Mormons believe that the Constitution is divinely inspired. He says that Romney should be asked how that affects his view of it. Why? I daresay many non-Mormons believe that as well. Even nonbelievers such as I think that it is, in some sense, inspired. What does it matter? The president is supposed to execute the law, not make it. He is sworn to uphold the constitution. What is Balmer's view on this? Does he think that reverence for the constitution is a vice?

Another suspicious thing about Romney, according to Balmer, is that Mormons believe they have the true faith. Strange indeed! If they didn't believe that, they would be members of some other faith.

To Balmer, Romney seems “cagey” for answering questions about his religion by saying such things as “I’m not a theologian” and “I don’t speak for my church.” What would he say if Romney proceeded to lecture everyone about the church's theology? Then Romney would be a nut or a weirdo, right? Balmer compliments Joseph Lieberman for having "patiently answered the [very few] questions [asked about his religion], declaring, for example, that he was an observant Jew, not an Orthodox Jew, and explaining the difference." However, if we consistently apply the standard that Balmer applies to Romney, shouldn’t Lieberman have gone into detail about why he is not a (mainstream) Christian, and the political implications of all that?

But after all, Lieberman ran for office on the Democratic ticket. So Balmer naturally does not apply the same standard.

So much for the Reverend Mr. Balmer. Then there is Frank Bruni, New York Times columnist and general attack dog for Obama. His recent snark-piece, “Mitt’s Muffled Soul,” went after Romney for not mentioning in his debate in Florida that his father was born in Mexico because Mitt’s grandfather had fled there to avoid the ban on polygamy that the Mormon Church had instituted. Bruni’s complaint apparently is that there is less discussion of Romney’s Mormon faith than there was four years ago. It doesn’t seem to occur to Bruni that the reason Romney’s faith is not a big deal in this primary fight is precisely because it is old news. That is, everyone on the planet now knows that Romney is a Mormon, because that was thoroughly explored in the last primary campaign. And the fact that Mormons once allowed polygamy is also old news, centuries old, in fact.

Bruni has decided that since most Americans seem indifferent to Romney’s religion — what with $5 a gallon gas and the prospect of our economy going the way of Greece’s — he is personally going to “home in on Romney’s religion.” Bruni’s claim is that the Mormon religion has left a “cultural, psychological and emotional imprint on” Romney. Are his “guardedness” and “defensiveness” due to his belonging to — get this! — a “minority tribe”? Does his stamina reflect his years as a Mormon missionary?

It never occurs to Bruni that his target has every reason to be defensive, given the attacks he and all the members of his faith have had to endure — not least from snarky journalists. The idea that maybe Romney’s stamina reflects a healthy lifestyle seems beyond Bruni's ken.

Of course, Bruni plays the race card, reminding us that the Mormons' ban on blacks in the priesthood lasted until 34 years ago.

The most extended and vitriolic hit-piece on Romney and his faith ejaculates from that monarch of snark, Frank Rich, formerly of — what else? — the New York Times, now of New York Magazine. Reptilian Rich is in a fury about Romney. (But then, he would be in a fury about any Republican — his self-appointed mission being to throw acid at anyone who dares oppose the current Regime.) In his meandering, self-contradictory screed on Romney, he is obviously frustrated at the total lack of real dirt he can find.

Rich never considers why a devout, middle-aged Mormon, trying to raise a large family, might not want to go out boozing it up at Hooters with the other Masters of the Universe.

For example, he quotes unnamed fellow Bain Capital coworkers who say that Romney was a great guy to work with, bright and good at what he did — but, “Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we’d always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us knew who the guy was.” The obtuse Rich never considers why a devout, middle-aged Mormon, trying to raise a large family, might not want to go out boozing it up at Hooters with the other Masters of the Universe.

With Rich, no Republican can ever win, no matter what his lifestyle. If he is known to have been a partier, such as Dubya was when younger, that will be used to attack him as a drunk. If he doesn’t party, as Romney doesn't, the Republican will be bashed for being aloof and self-contained.

Then there’s physical appearance. If the Republican candidate is out of shape or unattractive, Rich will attack him for that. If he is good looking, Rich will take the opposite approach: “Unlike Nixon’s craggy face, or, for that matter, Gingrich’s, Romney’s does not look lived in. . . . Even at Mitt’s most human, he resembles George Hamilton without the self-deprecating humor or the perma-tan.”

So Rich wants us to believe that Romney’s so good looking he’s not human! This is weird stuff — Rich comes across here like a jealous schoolgirl with an unrequited crush on the school’s quarterback.

Of course, Mitt’s whiteness becomes important: “Romney is in some ways more exotic and removed from ‘real America’ than Obama ever was, his gleaming white camouflage notwithstanding. Romney is white, all right, but he’s a white shadow.” Budding bien pensant writers please note: this is what passes for witty writing in progressive circles. Romney’s white skin camouflages what? A black interior? So if he is elected, will he be our third black president, after Clinton and Obama? In the oxymoron department: "a white shadow”? What the hell is a “white shadow?”

Rich dismisses Romney as a man of no real accomplishment — unlike Rich’s messiah, Barack Obama: “Aside from his ability to build Bain capital and pile up profits there, Romney has remarkably few visible accomplishments to show for his 64 years.”

Really? Yes, Romney’s accomplishments are truly feeble. He has only done such things as:

Graduated from BYU with highest honors.

Graduated from Harvard with both a JD and an MBA, again with honors, but — please note — without affirmative action.

Built a quarter-century career of distinction in the management consulting business, earning about a quarter billion dollars along the way, while helping such companies as Burlington Industries, Corning, Domino’s Pizza, Monsanto, and Staples become successful.

As head of Bain Capital for 14 years, helped get investors a average yearly return of 113% , and saw to it that the profits were widely shared within the company.

Helped these companies succeed without a nickel of taxpayer support.

While getting his education and then pursuing a business career, helped raise a large family.

Ran against Ted Kennedy for his lifetime Senate seat, giving Kennedy his closest run, and losing only after Kennedy was forced to spend a fortune in negative ads.

Was called to rescue the floundering, deficit- and scandal-plagued 2002 Olympics, and did so, making the games successful and financially profitable.

Was elected in 2002 as governor of Massachusetts, where he eliminated a $3 billion deficit and greatly improved the state's business climate.

Provided tens of millions of dollars to charities both secular and religious.

Reluctantly, Rich acknowledges that two reporters (Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, of the ultra-liberal Boston Globe) who set out to dig up the dirt on Romney, and published a critical biography, really couldn’t find any “bombshells.” This, however, is somehow “revealing” — revealing of more oxymoronic crap.

Rich is left to fill his piece with anti-Mormon slurs. The title tips us off: “Who in God’s Name is Mitt Romney?” Then the attacks start coming: “The big dog that has yet to bark . . . Romney’s long career as a donor to and lay official of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” “That faith is key to the Romney mystery.” “Romney is not merely a worshipper sitting in the pews but the scion of a family dynasty integral to the progress of an American-born faith . . .”

Naturally, Rich feels obligated to remind to remind us that the Mormons once practiced polygamy, while pretending to say it is irrelevant: “The questions [about Romney’s faith] are not theological. Nor are they about polygamy, the scandalous credo that earlier Romneys practiced even after the church banned it . . .” No, Rich wants to know whether Romney “countenanced or enforced [the Church’s] discriminatory treatment of blacks and women.” Does he also wonder whether Nancy Pelosi has done her part to make the Roman Catholic Church ordain women?

This is weird stuff — Rich comes across like a jealous schoolgirl with an unrequited crush on the school’s quarterback.

Rich is able to get in a dig at Romney’s wealth (yes, yes, Romney is rich) while continuing his bashing of Mormonism: “Much as the isolating cocoon of Romney’s wealth can lead him to dismiss $347,327 in speaking fees as ‘not very much’ . . . so the demographic isolation imposed by his religion takes its own political toll.” And on and on. Rich obviously wants readers to share his disgust about Mormons.

Perhaps the most blatantly bigoted attack on Romney’s religion came from Charles Blow — what else but another New York Times columnist? As the aptly-named Blow listened to Romney on the CNN Republican primary debate, he tweeted his followers the constructive comment, “Let me just tell you this Mitt ‘Muddle Mouth,’ I’m a single parent and my kids are ‘amazing’! Stick that in your magic underwear.” Blow was referring in this derogatory way to the Mormon belief that certain garments are of religious significance. One wonders if Blow has derogatory ways of talking about yarmulkes, or nuns' habits.

It is amazing that nobody at the Times has demanded Blow’s resignation — considering how famously sensitive the paper is when it comes to certain kinds of slurs. Amazing, that is, until you remember that a Mormon is running against the paper's chosen messiah. Notice also that the media hypocrites I have mentioned never seem to have never uttered a peep about the religion of Harry Reid — the buffoon who shoved Obamacare down the nation’s throat. Reid is also a Mormon, but nobody asks him to explain his church’s history, theology, or religious customs.

It is even more hilariously hypocritical that none of these people are busying themselves about Obama’s religion. As far as I know, they have not demanded that Obama explain why he stayed so long in a church that held, for example, that AIDS was created by white people and deliberately inflicted on black people. When this came out in the counter-media, and Obama dropped his affiliation with Reverend Wright, the mainstream dropped what little notice it had paid to the matter. Can you doubt that, had Obama been a Mormon (for there are black Mormons), the media would never have discussed Mormonism at all?

My suggestion to the Romney campaign — not that they are looking for suggestions — is to be under no illusion about what is coming at them. Obama’s minions will attack Romney without mercy, or religious grounds.

How should he handle these attacks? Well, when they come from the press in the form of persistent questions about his faith, he should reply in the same way every time, a la Senator Lieberman: “I am an observant Mormon. Which is irrelevant to my candidacy. If you want to learn about my proposals for fixing what Obama has broken, ask me about them. But if you want to learn about my faith, may I suggest that you go to the library and check out a book?” He should avoid at all costs the media trap trying to get him to discuss any aspect of Mormon theology. Why? Because non-Mormons will then be drawn into disputing it, and then will confuse disagreement with his theology with disagreement with his policy proposals. The mainstream media is hoping that the public will be tricked by this irrelevant association.

In any election, you try to do two things: get your voters out to the polls, and get your opponent’s voters to stay home. It is likely that the Obama super-PACs will run anti-Mormon ads, especially in areas of heavy evangelical Protestant concentration, with the intention of making the evangelicals stay home, under the theory that many evangelical Protestants dislike Mormonism — which, in fact, many do.

Countering this will be a job for the pro-Romney super-PACs. Here’s my suggestion for them: tape some homilies delivered by Romney’s pastor, and play parts of them juxtaposed with the juicier parts of Reverend Wright’s rants (“God Damn America!” comes to mind), with an announcer asking in the background which is more disturbing. Rely on the fact that evangelical Christians are invariably deeply pro-American. Run these ads wherever and whenever the Obama super-PACs run their anti-Mormon propaganda.

So that the reader will know exactly what is motivating me, let me state for the record that I am completely agnostic in matters religious. I was exposed to religion early on, and it didn’t take, whereupon the nuns dropkicked my posterior out of St. Mel’s Catholic School. (They were quite within their rights so to do, and I have never blamed them for it.) Ever since, I have oscillated between total unconcern and complete indifference to religion. I believe no more in Mormonism than I do in Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, or anything else. I just hate intolerance, and I profoundly despise hypocritical intolerance.

Harry Reid is also a Mormon, but nobody asks him to explain his church’s history, theology, or religious customs.

Unless one finds a religion whose practices pose a clear threat to society — say, a crazed Kali cult, setting fire to people’s homes — I see no reason to fear it or demand of its adherents that they explain and justify their faith, to me or anyone else. It’s their business.

While I am far from an expert on Mormon theology, my own eyes tell me that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are far from dangerous citizens. In general, they appear to work hard and avoid harming others. In this respect, they seem exemplary citizens.

That should be an end to it.

Sadly, it won’t be.

About this Author

Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of Liberty. His most recent book, Devious Thoughts, is available through Amazon. All of his academic articles are freely available through www.Academia.edu.

Mittimal Damage

After being badgered incessantly by Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum, “vulture capitalist” Romney finally released his tax filings. We finally got to see what dirt was being covered up in his returns.

And the dirt was — nothing!

The press sifted through the 500 plus pages of Romney’s 2010 filing (and his projected filing for 2011), desperately looking for something to hit him with, and Romney came out totally clean. The media mission was to find new material that their guy Obama could use to bash Romney, but the mission was an abject failure.

True, the released material shows Romney to be a very rich man. But the filings only confirm what anybody could have found by Google-searching the dude and reading his Wiki entry, to wit, that he is worth around a quarter of a billion bucks. Listen, don’t get me wrong: I would love to have that kind of scratch. But it doesn’t put the man on the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list — he’s nowhere as wealthy as such media-darling leftist billionaires as Warren Buffett and George Soros.

Progressives are cheap when it comes to spending their own money to help others. They are generous only with other people’s money.

To be precise, in 2010 Romney earned $21.7 million, of which $12.6 million was capital gains, $3.3 million taxable interest, $4.9 million dividend income, and the remaining million or so money coming from various business gains, refunds, and speaking fees. Romney gave a whopping $3 million to charity — about 14% of his income.

Taxes on cap gains, dividends, and interest rates are a flat 15%, and charitable donations are quite legally deductible — which explains why he “only” paid about $3 million in taxes (about a 14% effective tax rate).

In short, he legitimately minimized his taxes, and paid no more than he was legally required to. This puts him in the same boat as the rest of us, Obama and Biden (and Buffett and Soros) included. I confess that I try to minimize my taxes legally. I never — repeat, never — pay more than the law requires, and I have nowhere near Romney’s tax burden.

The mainstream media was reduced to nitpicking. It turns out, for example, that Romney — whose portfolio is in a blind trust, please note, so invests without his knowledge or control — had small investments in Swiss and Cayman Island accounts. All quite legal if declared to the government — and it was.

Of his generous charitable giving, half of it went to the Mormon church, and the rest to a variety of charities, including one for researching MS (an ailment that afflicts his wife).

His projected 2011 filing, which he has promised to release in April when it is filed, shows similar income, charitable outlays, and tax rate.

There is no doubt that Obama will use as much of this as he can to hammer Romney in the fall, assuming that Romney is the Republican nominee, which I regard as virtually certain. But there is little ammo here.

Indeed, Romney’s lavish charitable giving actually underscores Obama’s cheapness when it comes to charitable giving. Compare the nearly 14% of his income ($3,000,000) that Romney gave, to what the Obamas did: from 2000 through 2004, they gave about 1% to charity (or less than $11,000), and in 2007 they gave 5.7% (or about $240,000). Even more tight-fisted was VP Joe Biden, who averaged a pathetic 0.3% (a truly risible $349) in annual charitable giving in the decade before he became vice president, and not much more since. Last year, Biden gave 1.4% ($5,300) to charity. Truly nothing compared to Romney.

The national average for giving is about 5%.

This illustrates the thesis of Arthur Brook’s estimable Who Really Cares?, a book I reviewed for these pages some time back (March 2009, 43–6): the progressives are cheap when it comes to spending their own money to help others. They are generous only with other people’s money.

Even the 14% tax rate that Romney enjoys is hard to use against him. Remember, the John Kerry household paid 13%, and the Democrats had no problem voting for him as their nominee. And for Obama to push the capital gains and dividend rates back up is for him to risk a major downturn on the stock market, as well as in the lavish support he is getting from his billionaire buddies. That could cost him the election.

In the end, after relentless attacks by Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum, all that has been revealed about Romney is that he legally and ethically earned a large amount of money, paid his taxes, and is a devout member of his church. In short, what is known now is what everybody knew all along.

Given that Obama has few accomplishments he can run on, we can also expect from him what we knew all along. His likely $2 billion reelection campaign (the $1 billion his campaign will have to spend, and the $1 billion that will be spent by groups that support him) will be entirely negative. And it will be as repetitive as it will be negative. It will simply repeat that Romney is rich, rich, rich! And he is white, white, white! And he is Mormon, Mormon, Mormon!

I am weary already.

About this Author

Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of Liberty. His most recent book, Devious Thoughts, is available through Amazon. All of his academic articles are freely available through www.Academia.edu.

Do the Republicans Deserve to Lose?

Liberty readers presumably want to defeat President Obama and the Democrats. Apart from his beliefs, policies, and associates, Obama is a decent man. His challenger, to have a chance of winning, should be one also. Moreover, he should not have so much in his background requiring excuses and apologies — no matter how valid — as to preempt the voters’ limited attention from policy issues.

No one has a right to the nomination, or to complain about unfairness if he doesn’t get it. Electability is a reasonable requirement even for the most decent person.

Gingrich’s excuses and apologies are not even good ones, in my view, even though they may work in campaigning. His undistinguished record at West Georgia College, his questionable ethics and other reasons for being forced out of the speakership and even out of Congress, his half-truths, his “grandiosity” (so identified by Rick Santorum), and his marital infidelities all testify to his character. His claim to have changed his character and to have received or at least to have asked for God’s forgiveness strikes me as disgusting hypocrisy.

In a column in the Opelika-Auburn News of January 21, the paper’s publisher aptly calls Gingrich “an arrogant, hypocritical, corrupt blowhard” who “is disliked most fervently by those people who know him best. . . .” In my word, he is a slimy character.

Mitt Romney seems competent; and if he commits himself to so-called conservative policies, however belatedly, I suppose that he will faithfully pursue them. He could quite probably justify how he made his money and why he paid low taxes; but his doing so, however soundly, will leave a residue of doubt with many voters and will divert time and attention from real issues. He lacks charisma. Again, it is not unfair to expect electability of a candidate.

Rick Santorum appears to be a decent person, but he devotes too much attention to pushing socially conservative views rather than to real economic and fiscal problems. Ron Paul is sincere and passionate; but the voting public is not ready for consistent libertarianism, perhaps especially not on foreign policy. Gary Johnson would have been a more persuasive candidate inclined toward libertarianism. In comparison with the now remaining four aspirants, Jon Huntsman appealed to me.

It is hackneyed but relevant to recognize that the personal characteristics required of a successful campaigner are quite different from those of a high government official. What could be done? The Founding Fathers, well versed in history, had foresight. The Constitution, Article II, Section 1, says that each state shall appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct. . . .” The legislatures might constitutionally specify the appointment of electors otherwise than by statewide direct popular vote, conceivably even by lot (although better ideas may turn up). And the electors from all the states might be encouraged to meet and discuss candidates before casting their votes. Of course, no such reform is in the cards.

As things now stand, I am afraid that Bret Stephens is right in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece of January 24: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.” I’d appreciate being shown why my pessimism is mistaken.

What’s Interesting about Iowa

By the time the Iowa caucus finally happened, even political junkies were sick of it. It was a contest of doubtful influence on anything, and this year it was virtually impossible for anyone to “win” the thing. (A “win,” I believe, should constitute something more than 25%.) CNN and Fox News kept saying that “excitement” was “building.” Right. One Lego block at a time. And those debates — Good God! Why? How many dull parties must you attend? I say none.

But I was surprised and amused by the circus animals who were paraded through the streets of Sioux City, each with its own fleet of trainers and guard of clowns. It wasn’t the greatest show on earth, but it was a show.

Michele Bachmann, who demonstrated that illiteracy need be no handicap to a person’s self-esteem.

Newt Gingrich, who consistently delighted me with his screwiness and bitchiness. Every one of his “new ideas” had me rolling in laughter. (My favorite was the one about summoning local juries to determine whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in this country. As you probably know, I am no friend of open immigration, but if ever there was a court invented by a kangaroo, Gingrich’s immigration jury was it.) I loved the perfect zingers he scored on the other candidates. When an outraged Bachmann demanded to know whether he had called Mitt Romney a liar, Gingrich calmly asked, “Why are you so horrified?” I’m going to miss Newt.

Herman Cain, a good orator, and an intelligent person, who somehow lacked the rare and peculiar kind of intelligence that’s necessary to recall embarrassing incidents in one’s personal life. Of course, this is the kind of intelligence that almost everyone else possesses, but why should it be expected of a presidential candidate?

Jon Huntsman, the candidate from the New York Times.

Rick Santorum, the former Senator from the Roman Catholic Church. Who else would have complimented George Bush, a Methodist, on his performance as a politicized Catholic? “From economic issues focusing on the poor and social justice, to issues of human life, George Bush is there. He has every right to say, 'I’m where you are if you're a believing Catholic.’” The surge that Santorum experienced in Iowa was initiated by conservative Catholics who realized, at last, that this hapless, obscure person was actually a Knight of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta.

Mitt Romney, the man who everyone loves to hate. You’ve got to appreciate a candidate whose aides run a Mittness Protection Program.

Rick Perry. You’ve got to love a guy who, being revealed as an ignorant fool, funded an ad campaign in which he admitted to being an ignorant fool, yet urged everyone to vote for him.

I’m going to miss these acts — the acts that go away, of course. The ones that keep going inspire no such nostalgic feelings.

But what of Ron Paul? I am sorry to say, from the dramatic point of view, that I was not surprised by anything that happened with him. I expected him to suffer attacks. And I expected him, notwithstanding the attacks, to achieve about 20% of the vote. He got 21%. That’s about what he usually gets from Republicans (and independents acting as Republicans, as in Iowa) when noses are counted or buttons are pushed.

Believe me, I would rather see myself as part of Paul’s 21% than as part of the less than 1% in which I am placed whenever Libertarian Party registration or voting is measured. But — call me a traitor if you want to — I’ve never believed the results of the Nolan survey or any other questionnaire purporting to show that more than 20% of people in America are really libertarians. They aren’t. If they were, they’d have plenty of opportunities to show it, but they don’t. What they are is people who believe in legalizing drugs and raising taxes on “the wealthy,” or lowering taxes and pursuing a bellicose foreign policy, or some other combination of views that seems, from libertarians’ perspective, incoherent and ridiculous. But America has always been an essentially libertarian country without a libertarian population. It’s the triumph of structure over “the people.”

Would Paul attract more voters if he recognized this? Here’s my reason for asking that question. Paul is a preacher, and he preaches largely to the choir. His rhetoric assumes that “Americans want” what he wants. He seems honestly surprised that anyone should care that Iran has an atom bomb, or worry about his desire to dismantle the Federal Reserve system. But even I care that Iran has the bomb, and I well remember having to be convinced that the Fed was a bad idea. Every libertarian can say the same about his or her experience with libertarian ideas. But Paul has the preacher’s style, not the educator’s, or the conversationalist’s. He talks to people, not with them.

So could he attract more votes if he were a different kind of campaigner? The good thing and the bad thing is that it’s hard to tell whether he could or not. I want to believe that the libertarian philosophy can be conveyed with even greater effect. Yet Ron did very well at holding his 21%, no matter what. And twenty-one percent isn’t a percentage to scorn. There’s leverage in that.

About this Author

Stephen Cox is editor of Liberty, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison and American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution. Newly published is Culture and Liberty, a selection of works by Isabel Paterson.

Gary Johnson for President

December 28 marked an important day in Libertarian Party history — the day that the party gained a presidential candidate, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, capable of smashing its previous high in any presidential election, and perhaps even making the LP marginally relevant for once (or, at least, gaining the party's second-ever electoral vote). Johnson as standard bearer would be something of a perfect storm for the LP — which, though unavoidably also a tempest in a teapot, would nonetheless make a bigger splash than the Party has ever been capable of before.

Flash back to the last election cycle. No, go back two, to 2004, when the LP, still reeling from Harry Browne’s machinations, nominated a complete unknown as its presidential candidate. The list of “missed opportunities by the Libertarian Party” is a long and tragicomic one, but surely the choice of Michael Badnarik must be at or near the top: in an election evenly split between the military-statist Bush and the eco-statist Gore, the LP could’ve had a healthy cut of the excluded middle — but Badnarik’s was not the name to draw those voters.

In 2008, with that swing-and-a-miss behind them, the LP whiffed with the opposite approach, nominating a big name who was a, shall we say, imperfect fit with party ideals. I’m not one to deny the place of pragmatism in politics, but the man who authored the Defense of Marriage Amendment and fervently prosecuted the Drug War was a strange choice for the supposed party of freedom. No matter how hard he pushed his Road to Damascus narrative, a large chunk of the LP base (namely, donors and state and local party poobahs) was never going to buy into his campaign.

As a result, Bob Barr’s failure was utterly predictable — the rift in the party in 2008 was clear for all to see — but more to the point, just as utterly inevitable. In Barack Obama, the Democrats found a candidate who could reach out to the same undecideds the LP tries to make its own — those looking to cast a vote in dissent, anything so long as it has nothing to do with the party in power. Empty as we now know (or always knew) his promises of “Hope” and “Change” to be, they were nonetheless effective in closing off any change the Libertarians had of playing a role in the last cycle.

All of which is to say, the LP screwed up by getting its candidates backward — if anything, the off-the-ranch Republican with name recognition would have fared much better in 2004, serving as an alternative to two unpalatable statists. Meanwhile, 2008 would have been the time to run an outsider, someone who could elucidate a libertarian point of view, in the rare moments he (or she — vide Mary Ruwart) was called upon to do so.

But in 2012, the LP has the opportunity to pitch a candidate to an electorate seemingly sick of the whole process. Obama’s broken promises, aforementioned, have alienated a small but substantial portion of his base — those who cannot overlook our nation’s ongoing, unnecessary, and inhumane foreign wars; the continued attacks on the constitutional rights of the citizenry; the all-enveloping secrecy in which the government carries on its affairs; the gulag archipelago we are building up in our modern prison system . . . in short, all those left-leaning pundits and bloggers not in step with the all-conquering Obama line foisted upon us hourly by the power-loving, bootlicking establishment media outlets.

Who will these people turn to? Certainly not the Republican Party, at least not once Ron Paul again is defeated by, or cedes way to, a far inferior challenger. Despite moments in the sun for the laughable Herman Cain and the odious Newt Gingrich (not to mention Rick Perry’s campaign, brought to you by Tom of Finland), this nomination has from the first been Mitt Romney’s to lose. Only trouble is, Romney and Obama are, as The Root recognized long ago, nearly the same person. And more recently, one of Romney’s chief advisors was heard loudly rattling the saber for war with Iran — something that seems increasingly inevitable whichever party ends up with its finger on the button.

Hence, there is a chance that an experienced, eloquent Libertarian Party candidate — one capable of making, forcefully, the case against war, whether against other nations that pose no threat to us, or against those of our own citizens whose only crime is to ingest federally frowned-upon substances — could steal a sizable chunk of the vote, and not just from the college crowd (who, as we all know, don’t vote — I should know: I am one still). And that’s where Gary Johnson comes in. He’s an experienced pol who has the benefit of gaining his experience in a somewhat out-of-the-way state, allowing him both to get away with more than he might elsewhere (witness the in-progress crucifixion of Chris Christie in New Jersey), and to get raves from both Right and Left at different times for his handling of budgets and various other crises.

Additionally, Johnson has a legitimate beef with the presidential process, which effectively killed his campaign before it had hardly started by the simple expedient of refusing to let him speak alongside other candidates. By switching over to the LP, Johnson can present himself as a true outsider, one unbeholden to the major-party machines and their media purse-chihuahuas. His strongest issue, the legalization of marijuana (and decriminalization of other presently illegal drugs), will find supporters all along the political spectrum, especially those who for some reason expected Obama to live up to promises to back off medical dispensaries, rather than double down on the persecution. And he is glib enough (and has the voting record, besides) to avoid the typical traps laid down for third-party candidates: disaster management, education and child safety, national security. Likewise, he lacks the baggage some others do — most particularly, he has no history of orgazinational racism or anti-gay bias in his past. And — though this ought to be by far the least important thing about him — at 58 and in good shape, he remains telegenic and does not come off as a coot or a crank.

To close, I note that this is not an endorsement, either for Liberty or for myself, personally. It is, instead, a recommendation. If the Libertarian Party wishes to be relevant in this cycle, then it should gather round Johnson early on, kick the fundraising into gear, and come May’s national convention, launch his candidacy with as much money and PR as can be mustered. If, instead, the LP’s members wish to continue as they always have, then they should quibble and cavil and play up faults in Johnson’s record, and ensure that he is hobbled heading into the general election.

The choice is there, and with it a rare opportunity. But with things finally breaking the LP’s way, what remains to be seen is whether the party is capable of taking advantage.